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Yam Breakthrough
Using vine cuttings to propogate yam spares tubers for consumption or sale, limits nematode infestation, and speeds the dissemination of improved varieties.
Yam farmers across Africa can look forward to better days ahead with the development by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and its partners of a new technique for propagating yams that does not use tubers.
In this innovative approach, yam is propagated with vine cuttings grown on carbonized rice husks. Eliminating the use of tubers as planting material leaves more yam available for food or for sale, and it significantly lowers the risk of nematode infestation. The technique promotes faster multiplication and better and more uniform crop quality.
In the traditional system, tubers used as seed consume 30-50% of production costs. Using tubers is also quite inefficient, with a multiplication ratio of only about 1 to 5-10. By comparison, cereals have a propagation ratio of about 1 to 300.
“Our goal is to reduce the amount of yam tuber invested as seed, so that farmers will have more food and make more money,” says Hidehiko Kikuno, IITA yam physiologist and project leader. “Another good thing about this technology is that farmers can obtain the propagation medium — carbonized rice husks — cheaply, even for free.”
As the technology offers a rapid, high-volume, clean and cost-effective method of multiplying yam, it effectively addresses the need for the fast and wide distribution of high-quality improved varieties to meet rising demand for the crop. IITA has begun field trials of this technology in partnership with farmers in Nigeria’s north-central Niger State. |
Hidehiko Kikuno. Photo: IITA. |
“The technology will save farmers the cost and difficulty of acquiring seed yams,” says Joshua Aliyu, a staff member of the Niger State Agricultural Development Project who works on the trials. “It will bring the rebirth of yam cultivation in our community.”
Kikuno shows a local Nigerian cassava farmer how to properly plant the tuberless-propagated yam. Photo: IITA.
Yam is a major staple in Africa. Average daily consumption per capita is highest in Bénin at 364 kilocalories (kcal), followed by Côte d’Ivoire (342 kcal), Ghana (296 kcal) and Nigeria (258 kcal). According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, in 2005, an estimated 48.7 million tons of yam were produced worldwide, with sub-Saharan Africa accounting for 97% of it. The dietary and economic importance of the starchy tuber crop is on the rise in a number of countries in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Oceania.
The research is funded by the Japanese government, Sasakawa Africa Association, Tokyo University of Agriculture, and International Cooperation Center for Agricultural Education at Nagoya University in Japan. Partners include the Tokyo University of Agriculture; National Root Crops Research Institute at Umudike, Nigeria; Crop Research Institute, Ghana; and Institute of Agricultural Research for Development, Cameroon.
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